Calvinism Sermon: God Saves. Not Man. (Part 4 in series)

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Calvinism Sermon: Limited Atonement (Part 5 in series)

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You go over your Bibles to Romans chapter 9, there's a text to begin today, the discussion of God's freedom and salvation.

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Romans chapter 9, as I said before, it's a premier text regarding this discussion about God's sovereignty,

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His mercy in salvation, our sin, our fallenness.

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Romans chapter 9, and let's start in verse 7.

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Hear now the words of the living and true God. Neither are they all children because they are

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Abraham's descendants. On the contrary, your offspring will be traced through Isaac.

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That is, it is not the children by physical descent who are God's children, but the children of the promise are considered to be the offspring.

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For this is the statement of the promise. At this time, I will come and Sarah will have a son.

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And not only that, but also Rebecca received a promise when she became pregnant by one man, our ancestor

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Isaac. For though her sons had not been born yet or done anything good or bad, so that God's purpose according to election might stand not from works, but from the one who calls.

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She was told, the older will serve the younger. As it is written,

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I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau. What should we say then?

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Is there injustice with God? Absolutely not. For he tells Moses, I will show mercy to whom

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I will show mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it does not depend on human will or efforts, but on God who shows mercy.

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For the Scripture tells Pharaoh, I raised you up for this reason, so that I may display my power in you, and that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.

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So then, he shows mercy to whom? To those he wants to, and he hardens those he wants to harden.

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He will say to me, therefore, why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?

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But who are you, a mere man, to talk back to God? Well what is form?

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Say to the one who formed it, why did you make me like this? Or has the potter no right over the clay to make from the same lump one piece of pottery for honor and another for dishonor?

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And what if God, desiring to display his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience objects of wrath ready for destruction?

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And what if he did this to make known the riches of his glory on objects of mercy that he prepared beforehand for glory?

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On us, the ones he also called, not only from the Jews, but also from the

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Gentiles. As he also says in Hosea, I will call not my people, my people.

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And she who is unloved, beloved. And it will be in the place where they were told you are not my people, there they will be called sons of the living

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God. As far as the reading of God's holy word, let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your word, the gift of your word.

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God, this text shouts to us. God, from your word, it shouts to us, God, your freedom and salvation, your freedom in mercying whom you will and hardening those whom you will.

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And God, this rubs against so much of our own human tradition, our own philosophy,

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God, and it makes much of you, and in many ways so little of us, it makes us so very small and dependent.

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And I pray, God, in this message that you, Lord, would speak to your church, that you, God, would cause us,

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Lord, to praise you and to worship you, God, that we would see you as you truly are. I pray,

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God, for everyone in this room, Lord, no matter how long they've been in you, that God, that you would bless them even today with the response of worship and praise.

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God, allow me to speak, Lord, in myself unworthy to be handling your word, unworthy to be in this position to be speaking from your word.

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I pray that you'd bless this jar of clay, cause me to be forgotten and Christ to be exalted and remembered.

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I pray, God, that you would through your spirit and his power this day, God, that you would teach your people.

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Raise us up. Use us for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen. It's a powerful passage,

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Romans 9. I can remember there was a time that I even was going to a church that was reformed.

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They said that they were reformed. They held to the doctrines of grace. They were covenantal in their view.

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It was a church that held to the pillars of the Reformation, that it is Scripture alone that is the only infallible rule of faith, that salvation was through Christ alone, through grace alone, all to the glory of God alone.

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They held to all those. I remember this pastor of the church, wonderful man of God, was doing an exegesis, an exposition of the gospel according to Paul, the book of Romans.

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He was going through verse by verse through the text. And I remember that I came in on one Sunday and we were in Romans 8, getting ready to do

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Romans 9. Came back the next Sunday and we were in Romans 10. And I thought, did

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I go into a coma, have I jumped ahead of time, am I some sort of a time traveler, did

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I miss something? Did Romans 9 fall out of our Bibles? I don't know what happened and I didn't know what happened and I found out later that it was decided that we wouldn't go through Romans chapter 9 because it was, quote, too controversial, too controversial.

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I'm going to speak to that for a moment. Yes, Romans 9 can be controversial.

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It clearly talks about things that actually contradict what is commonplace in our traditions, in our own man -made philosophies.

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And yes, Romans chapter 9 creates conflict on Facebook. Yes, that's true.

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Romans 9 has been the subject of debate. Romans 9 actually has divided churches. That, by the way, is true.

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Churches have actually split over this particular issue of God's freedom and salvation, Romans chapter 9.

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But here's the point. I believe that God's Word is holy. I believe that it is true.

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I believe that it is theanoustos, 2 Timothy 3, 16 through 17. It is breathed out by God, is profitable for teaching, correction.

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God's Word is supposed to be the very foundation of our life. We are not supposed to, as children of God, as followers of Christ, we're not supposed to hang on to traditions that we have simply because we've always believed them.

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We're not supposed to essentially defend and define our lives upon beliefs and teachings that contradict

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God's Word. Romans 9 is from God's own mouth. God directed this.

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God said these things. And that means that God wants us to know them. And here's what I want to suggest.

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If I have any position that contradicts God's Word, it is my position that needs to be rejected and ignored, not the

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Word of the living God. God has taught us in His Word that He is the sovereign, that He is the only

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God, the eternal God, that He loves sinners, that He's also just, and that we don't deserve salvation.

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God has taught us in our Word that we are so far separated from God that that chasm, it cannot be breached, it cannot be crossed by us, that God has to be the one who acts, that God is the one who actually brings life out of death, that God is the one that grants repentance and faith.

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These things I know, they make us so very small and God so very large.

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They humble us. I can tell you many, many times I've shared these truths, the grace of God and salvation, the freedom of God and salvation,

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I've shared them with people who love Jesus and I've heard so many times, and this is the truth,

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I've heard so many times from people, well, I don't like that. And you ask questions like, well, why?

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Why don't you like that? It's in the text. Because that would mean that I have nothing to do with my salvation.

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I've heard that so many times. And I think that if you hear that, that God is free in salvation, that He's the one who brings it about, and you think, well, that would mean

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I have nothing to do with this, I think you understand. That's right.

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And oftentimes in our culture, I mentioned this the last couple of weeks, we don't like the doctrines of grace, we don't like to hear about the sovereignty of God, and I want to say this, and I want you to think about it, meditate on it,

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I think primarily this rubs us the wrong way, because we have a heart problem as sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.

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It traces back to the very beginning, and it's found in all areas of our lives.

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You find it everywhere. You find it in your families, you find it in church, we find it on our own, we find it in the state, we find it in civil government, we find it in the media.

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We have a problem, and that is that we want to be the sovereign. We want to be the ones that determine what is good and what is evil, what is right, what is wrong, what is good, and what is bad.

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Yesterday we attended the feminist March rally in Phoenix, it was happening really all across the country.

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The biggest one was in Washington, D .C., our nation's capital. We were at the one here locally. I saw numbers of,

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I saw one number, 200 ,000, that was highly inaccurate. There were not 200 ,000 people there.

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Definitely at least 20 ,000 people there, I would say. Maybe I'm wrong, but it didn't appear to be that way.

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And we were at a place where we saw so many signs, so many visuals of people testifying to their own sovereignty.

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And what were they saying? They were saying, my body, my choice, it's my choice.

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And they would say things like, just because you're righteous doesn't make you right. All kinds of fun ones too, really actually very creative ones.

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Keep out of my uterus, right? People testifying that like, I'm the sovereign, I decide what happens to my body.

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I decide what happens around me. And you know what? I want to tell the legislature that they ought to listen to my position, that I'm the one that should get to determine for me and everybody else what is right and what is wrong.

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And that's just the problem, and the first display of this happens when I say we're sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, I mean in terms of, you look back at the beginning, and the first display of our revolt against His sovereignty takes place in the garden.

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What does God say? I'm the creator, His intimate relationship there, and He creates all these amazing, spectacular things.

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I mean, how can you war against this God? He is glorious and majestic and beautiful in all

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His ways, perfect in every attribute, and He creates. He didn't have to. He was in perfect fellowship and communion for all eternity,

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and yet He creates, and He creates so that He delights in His creatures, and then they find their deepest pleasure in Him.

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It's a world of ultimate perfection, no betrayal, no sin, no brokenness, no addiction, no disease, no tears, no veil of tears to see the world through, nothing.

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And God says, all this is yours, I'm going to bless you. He says, do this, and the day you do, you'll die.

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It is amazing, I mentioned before that that command of God was totally arbitrary. It wasn't that the fruit was evil or God was trying to rob them of some gift or blessing.

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It could have been anything. He could have said, don't go over there, don't look this direction, don't pick up that stick.

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He said, don't do this, the day you do, you'll die. I'll be the sovereign. I will determine what is right and wrong, and what you can and can't do.

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And what happens? You see it right there in the very beginning of your Bibles. What do they do? Eve is deceived,

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Adam sees it, looks good to him, and he determines, I'm going to do it. And they listen to the voice of the enemy, where he says, hath

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God said? Did God really say? No, no, no. He's wanting to stop you from being like him, what?

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Knowing good and evil. And what's that mean? Like experiencing it? No, knowing good and evil in terms of determining for yourself what the standard is.

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Determining for yourself what is right and wrong. And there enters the fall, and what is the source of the fall?

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Listen, what is it? Pride. It's pride, it's human pride and arrogance.

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It's me wanting to be autonomous, me wanting to be in control. We resist authority.

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If you don't believe that, you don't have kids. Amen? Come on now, you know what

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I'm talking about. You see it so early on with the children that you have. You have kids, and what do you see?

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When they finally get to a place where they can actually maneuver, right? Where without you, you know, getting them someplace, and they can start touching things and taking things from themselves.

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You say things like, hey, don't do that, you'll die, right? Like right, like don't go to the balcony and try to climb over it and fall off.

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Don't stick some metal object into that thing, and you tell them for their own good, don't do that. I'm the sovereign in this home, and I'm telling you for your own safety, don't.

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And what do the kids do? They look over at the thing, they look over at you, and they go, hmm, I'll be the sovereign, thank you.

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And like, they go for it, right? You see it, you're like, oh, you son of Adam, right?

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Like that's, you know what I'm talking about, and all of a sudden, it just grows and expands. You think like, couldn't get any worse, and all of a sudden, they're like four and five, and then it gets more and more defined, and what is it?

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It's a revolt against sovereignty. It's a revolt against authority. It's everywhere, and it doesn't stop when you're seven.

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It doesn't stop when you're nine. It actually begins to increase, though we veil it, though we try to hide it, you start to turn on the news, and what do you see?

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People warring against authority, warring against sovereignty. What is the self -determination? What is it?

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Is it, I am the sovereign, I will determine, I will say what is good, I will say what is evil.

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And one thing I'm going to say here, just caveat, this is off to the side, not necessarily related directly to this, it's important.

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I mentioned on my Facebook page, just some thoughts I was having after yesterday, going to this place where you have all these secularists, and atheists, and agnostics, and all these people with these worldviews that war against Christ, that are so opposed to Christ.

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Let me tell you, brothers and sisters, yesterday was this amazing moment where you get to see like right in front of you, wow, they are so committed to their position, and the amazing thing was this.

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Listen, from what I can tell, and I'm not condemning anybody, but just from what I can tell in terms of like us being there, we were the only like professing

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Christians like in this crowd. Like I mean, genuine article in terms of submission to Christ, he's the boss,

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I had one woman tell me that she was a liberal Christian, fighting for the death of children, it was mocking the

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Bible and the Old Testament, so when I say professing Christian, I mean like legit professing Christian. And I'm going to say this in terms of like standards and authority, listen, when

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Christians check out of the world, and we don't go to them, we don't actually bring the word of truth into their lives, we don't risk our own lives and our own reputations for their good and for the glory of God, when we don't do that, it doesn't mean that nobody's imposing a standard, it doesn't mean that nobody's trying to force a worldview, it means that now

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Christians are not there with the word of God, and now all we have is self -professed autonomous people who want to be the sovereign in the world to impose their standards upon everybody around them.

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It's not a question of whether a worldview or standard will be imposed, it's a question of which one.

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It's not a question of whether a God will be there, an ultimate authority, it's a question of which

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God, which authority. It's important for us to know and recognize around us, what do you see?

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You see a world revolting against sovereignty. Now, I want to say, in terms of talking about that, the same problem exists within us as Christians.

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It doesn't go away because you're a Christian, you know, you war against your sin, you hate your sin, you're filled with the

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Spirit of God, yeah, you're being sanctified, God is changing you, your heart's changed, you're sinning and failing and getting back up again, sinning and failing, getting back up again,

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God is shaping you and moving you. But you know what? Our greatest war, our greatest battle comes down to the fact that we are still sinful people in a fallen world with new hearts, filled with the

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Spirit of God, loving Jesus, but God is shaping us. You know what the primary thing you have to focus on in your sanctification, generally speaking, is your own pride, it's your pride, it's your warring against His sovereignty.

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And what is it ultimately, watch, when you have struggles in your life as a believer and you're being shaped by God, what is it?

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What is it that you're fighting against? What? Your own pride and your own self -determined will to say,

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I'll be the one that chooses right now how I'll live. I'll be the one that determines right now how

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I'm supposed to live in God's world. I'll be the one that determines right now how I'm going to practice this or do this or don't do that.

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I'll be the one that determines, and you'll know as a Christian, I know God says this, but right now everything in me wants the opposite.

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And what are you saying there? I'll be the sovereign. I'll determine right now, God. I'll say what's right and what's wrong.

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We war against God's sovereignty, so when you come up against the doctrines of grace and you come against passages like Romans 9,

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Ephesians 1, John 6, John 10, you see all these passages, Isaiah chapters 40 through 46, and you see

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God as the sovereign, God having the freedom, something in us as sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, something in us starts to resist.

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Why? Because that's the source of our sin, our own pride and arrogance. So I want to encourage you to consider that as you think about things like Romans 9, because that's one of the main battles that we fight as Christians, is against our revolt, against the sovereignty.

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So quick thing, overview, if you are new right now and you haven't been here, the doctrines of grace is a way of saying tulip,

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T -U -L -I -P. It came from a fight that took place between what we call the

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Calvinists versus the Arminians. Ultimately, it has nothing to do with a man named John Calvin or a man named

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Jacob Arminius. It becomes an easy way to talk about this discussion. For example, if you wanted somebody to know what you believe about God, you could say,

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I'm a monotheist. One word that immediately codifies what you believe.

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There's only one God, eternal, self -existent, rather than saying polytheist, many gods. You could say,

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I'm Trinitarian. It's a word not in the Bible that describes an entire set of beliefs.

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One God, eternally existent as three persons. The terms Calvinist and Arminian are just simple ways to get at the heart of what we believe about the nature of the fall,

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God's sovereignty, the atonement, and God's preservation of people that he saved.

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So tulip, T -U -L -I -P, stands for total inability or total depravity.

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Stands for U, unconditional election. It stands for L, limited atonement or definite redemption.

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The I stands for irresistible grace and the P for perseverance of the saints.

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That's where we're at. We're getting up against now the L, definite redemption, limited atonement.

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Now let's just do a quick review of those two points, total depravity and unconditional election. Very simple.

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T, what we mean when we say total depravity is not, and this needs to be stressed, that people are as sinful as they could possibly be.

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What we're saying is that people have no ability to come to God apart from God sovereignly drawing them and giving them the gift of repentance and faith.

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That we are so fallen that we are, Ephesians chapter 2, listen, not sick, not wounded, we are dead.

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Dead in our sins and trespasses. And a question I actually got from Cheryl years and years and years ago while I was preaching on this for the first time at Apologia Church, Luke's wife.

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She said, what can a dead man do? That's stuck with me. I think it's a fantastic way of putting that.

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If we are dead in our sins and trespasses by nature children of wrath, as Paul says in Ephesians 2, then the question has to be asked, is it a meaningful word?

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Is it a meaningful way to describe our condition before God that we are dead? Because if it's the case that we are dead in our sins and trespasses, it's more like we're in the condition of Lazarus in his tomb, stinking dead behind a stone.

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No will, no ability to come to God. And it's like Jesus calling into that tomb,

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Lazarus, come forth. It's that kind of salvation. It's God who actually is the one who controls life and death.

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Total depravity. What it means is John chapter 6, verse 44, no man can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him.

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And I will raise him up. Stop and think for a moment. If you want to know what this whole thing is about, it's about John 6, verse 44.

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No man is able to come to me unless God draws, watch, it's not done, and God raises up everyone he draws.

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No ability, he has to draw, and he raises up the one he draws. You want tulip in a single verse, there, there,

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John 6, verse 44. It's more like Romans chapter 3, that catena of verses from the

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Old Testament that Paul draws from. Listen, what's it say? There is no God seeker, no one who seeks for God.

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And of course, everyone asks the question, well, if no one seeks for God, then what do we have churches for? Where'd they come from? Well, the reason you have churches is because God was seeking people.

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They weren't seeking him. That's total inability. Also, unconditional election looks a lot like Ephesians chapter 1.

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What's it say? That before the foundation of the world, God chose us in Christ.

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It's very clear, Ephesians chapter 1, that he predestined us to adoption as sons. It's Romans chapter 8, what?

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God foreknew us. He predestined us. He called us. He justified us.

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He glorified us. That golden chain of redemption, God is the sovereign. It looks like an unconditional election looks like John 6.

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John 6, what's it say? I've come down from heaven not to do my will, but the will of him who sent me.

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What is it? Jesus says, this is the will of him who has sent me, that of all that he has given to me, I should lose nothing.

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What's that say? What's it say? That there are these people that have been given to Jesus by the father.

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The father gave people to Jesus. And Jesus says that God's will, the father's will for him, is that he loses nothing of all that's been given to him.

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There's your hope. Where? Listen, it's your hope and your sanctification.

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It's your hope and your being brought into God's presence for all eternity. That's your hope.

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You know your failures. You know your sin. You know how you fail constantly in thought, word, and deed. Me too.

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But you know what the glory is in that passage? It's not simply, listen, don't do this. This is really, really important.

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You can't see a passage like that and simply say, total depravity, total depravity, total depravity, because that means you're not getting it.

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As a believer, what that says to you is that you have a father, an eternal father in heaven, who loved you with an everlasting, perfect God love.

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And he chose before the world began to give you to his son, and his son is saying,

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I will not lose the one's father you've given to me. That's unconditional election.

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There was nothing in us that caused God to make that decision in terms of our will, our works, our righteousness.

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Because here's the thing, listen, Christians talk like this. Tell me if you haven't heard this. When people talk about God's election and predestination, when they want to try to,

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I believe, not allow the text to speak for itself, they say things like this. Well, what that means is that God, he looked through time, he looked through time to see who would choose him.

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And based upon what he saw, that this person will choose him, then God chose them based upon their choice of him.

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Here's the problem, at the outset, if we say that God looks through time to see who will believe in him, you know what that means?

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It means that God is learning. He didn't know something, and he had to look through time to figure it out, which means that God is not omnipotent, and you lose what the

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Bible teaches about God knowing all things. But at the same time, second point, if God did look through time to see who would accept him and turn to him in faith, then what would

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God see? A graveyard of dead people.

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He would see people who are hostile to him, who don't love him, who don't seek him, who don't submit to his law, who cannot please him, who are not able to come to him.

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That's what he would see. So when we say unconditional election, what we mean is that when God chose, he chose with a sovereign freedom to give grace to people who do not deserve it.

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Now pause. How do these doctrines change you? Because look, here's the thing,

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Calvinists are known for being theologically rigorous, wanting to know what the text says.

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We talk about things like exegesis, and what does the text say, and draw out the meaning of the text. It's got to be the Bible.

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We're known for being theologically rigorous, but sometimes we're also known for being really, really cold and just dry.

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It's true. People often talk about Calvinists as arrogant, because usually they get them at the cage stage when there's the swinging of the

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Bible trying to make sure that everyone's convinced of the sovereignty of God. But you know what?

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What you need to learn from these things is that God is absolutely indescribably and comprehensively beautiful, and merciful, and that he loved you, you, you.

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If you have faith in Jesus, you are loved by God, and he knew all about you when he chose to love you.

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You are loved by God with an everlasting love that actually is faithful.

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You are loved by God with a love that you couldn't possibly fathom and comprehend with your three -pound brain.

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Can't happen. And you are loved by God so much that he has given all of himself to you to redeem you.

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And listen, if you know your condition, if you truly know your heart, then you know that, watch, watch, watch. What separates you from the feminist marching yesterday calling for death is one word, grace.

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And that you would be just like them. Listen, if you don't believe that, then you are rejecting what the

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Bible says about your condition. What separates you, me, from anybody who doesn't know

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God is the grace of God. Because put together, we're in the same mix, from the same parents, with the same problem.

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We are hostile to God, enemies of God. God didn't look at you and say, well, you're a lot more intelligent.

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Wow, you are a much better looking person. Well, you had a much better upbringing, or something about you that I really, really like.

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Like, you get it, right? Like, we know, right? It wasn't like that. God actually chose, by His grace, motivated by His love and mercy, to bring you to Himself.

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That's the truth. And if that doesn't set you off every day into worship of God and trust of God, I don't know as a pastor what will.

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I just don't. Now quickly, a couple terms I want to make sure we know.

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These are important terms because you're going to hear them a lot. And they're important concepts. So just two sets here.

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Number one, terms to know and understand. Monergism versus synergism.

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Now, if you're new to all of this and studied, trust me, this matters. It matters a lot.

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Are we saved monergistically? Is there mono, one force at work in salvation?

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Is it God alone bringing us about through His power? Is it God? Or, listen, is it just like every other man -centered religion?

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No matter the color, the book, the God, the stripe, every man -centered religion, every man -made religion, listen, has human beings somehow cooperating with God to bring about salvation through cooperation, whether that's righteousness, works, deeds, will.

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Something is in this relationship where God's doing all He can, but the human must, through some cooperative effort, work together with God to make that salvation possible.

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Every religion in the world has the same story. Karma. Popular word today.

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It's amazing that it is. And I hate it when I hear Christians saying it because the word itself comes from a worldview and religion that is absolutely antithetical to Scripture.

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But even in a religion where we say things like karma, what's the idea? You better start sowing good seeds of karma into the world.

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You don't want so much bad karma. If you get a lot of bad karma, you're gonna come back in the next life and restart, reboot, maybe as a snail or aardvark or a horse.

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Now here's the deal. You're gonna have enough good karma, good deeds, so that you work your way to a position where you realize that all is one, there are no distinctions, and you enter into the vast sea of oneness, which is nirvana.

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But what's the idea? If you don't have enough of this and you get enough of this, you're gonna be here and not there.

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You won't enter into nirvana. Mormonism, same story. Yeah, there's this guy named

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Jesus, Lucifer's brother, who did all these things. He did work and garden and atonement.

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But if you don't have enough good deeds, temple works, if you don't tithe enough, if you don't do this or that, if you don't have enough of those good deeds and works and cooperate, or if you lose your righteousness in some way, you won't be able to synergistically work towards exaltation, becoming a god and goddess of your own planet one day, synergism.

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Now what the Bible teaches, listen, and it offends people, I know, I grant it, is that God is the sovereign and through His own work and power and freedom,

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He saves all by Himself. And when you say, I believe in Jesus, you really do, but you only believe in Jesus.

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You only trust Him. You only love Him because He first loved you. That's the truth.

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That's monergism versus synergism. And I say, I don't know if I care about those big words. You ought to care because it's what separates biblical faith from false religion.

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Next, I want you to know, what we are ultimately saying when we talk about the doctrines of grace is, listen, is that your position on salvation has to be theocentric.

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What's the word theo? Theos comes from the word God, right, theos? But the word theocentric means that our view is

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God -centered. It's a question, watch, watch. Of knowing who

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God is, what He says, what He does, His power, His plan, and then working from that, what we know about that, down to us.

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We're not the center. God is the center. So it's, watch, theocentric versus anthropocentric, anthropos, the

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Greek word for man or mankind. So we want to say that salvation is theocentric, not anthropocentric.

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Those are some things you'll hear often. Okay, answering objections, these are important because I know they're coming up now, so let's do them together.

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Answering objections, ready, number one. God saves sinners all by Himself. He's the sovereign.

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He grants grace and mercy to those He chooses. People say, watch, ready, it's not, what, fair.

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It's not fair. God chose to give salvation to a particular people in Jesus Christ.

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How come He didn't give it to them? Most common objection, right?

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How come these, but not those? First thing I'm going to say real fast, this is just sort of a bonus, is that post -millennialism kills that objection.

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You might say, why is that? Because as a post -millennialist who believes that Jesus wins the entire world in history,

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I believe that at the end of history, that the large mass of humanity, the greater mass of humanity will have been saved.

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I believe actually at the end of history, the number saved is a number beyond comprehension that cannot even be calculated.

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I believe ultimately that through the victory at the atonement in the world, that ultimately Jesus wins and the vast majority of humanity is one.

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Some people say the small number of people, I think it could be demonstrated from the scriptures that it is the mass of humanity.

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Most of humanity that is saved, but we'll get to that later. Okay, just a side bonus there.

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But people say it's not fair that God gave salvation to these and not those. What are the assumptions? What are the hidden assumptions when someone says that's not fair?

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The assumption is, watch, grace can be demanded. When someone says it's not fair, what they're saying about grace is that it is owed to everybody.

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It ought to be thrown out and slathered across humanity like peanut butter.

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It's not fair. That's what you say when you say it's not fair. That's what you say. You say it's owed to everybody, but let's try this as Christians.

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Help me with this. Help me with this answer. What's a good working definition of grace? Unmerited favor.

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It means you don't deserve it. It's favor given to you and you don't deserve it. So when we say that's not fair, we are denying what biblical grace is.

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Next point, when we say that's not fair, it identifies right away what we believe about our condition.

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And what do we believe about our condition if we say it's not fair? Here's what we believe about our position, that we're not as bad as the

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Bible says we are. Because if we understood what the Bible says about God's holiness and our sin, then what would we say when we hear that God saves people?

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We'd say, why would he do that? Why would he save anyone?

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Why doesn't he take the whole lump of clay of sinful humanity? Why doesn't he take it and throw it out?

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Why does he save anybody? It should bewilder us when we hear that God saves even one.

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When you know about God's holiness and his justice, you think about God as righteous and blameless and you think about your own heart.

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Just start there. You think about all that's within you and all that you've done. You ought to be asking the question, why does he love me?

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How could God love someone like me? How could Jesus die for people who are at war with him?

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That's the real picture. When someone says it's not fair, they have a very unbiblical view of our sin.

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Next, it doesn't seem loving. Hopefully, you already have the answer to that.

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It doesn't seem loving. It is premierly loving that God would actually give salvation to any.

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But I want to address this. This is very, very important. This is one of the great heresies of our day. People often like to think about God, and when they'll even talk about Jesus in this,

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God is just a God of love. He's my broseph. God and I are bros, right? Jesus would never condemn anybody.

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What's the most popular Bible verse that atheists and secularists all know?

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What is it? Don't judge, lest you be judged, right?

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And what do we say? God would never judge. God would never condemn. God would never do that. Why? Because he's a

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God of love. In heaven, there are butterflies and balloons and precious moments dolls just strewn across the path.

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It's a place of beauty, and God would never be angry. Here's the thing.

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When someone says that, they are giving you a picture of God that is not

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God. It is an idol like any false god anybody falls before. It's an idol.

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God, watch. The place to put yourself to understand the attributes of God and what he's like, listen, is the cross.

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And everyone goes, oh, I love the cross. That's where God showed that he loved me. That's exactly right. But if you see that cross and you see only a loving

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God, you're not paying attention. Because if you see the cross, you ought to see the death penalty given and the wrath of God poured out upon his own son for sinful people.

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Why? Because we deserve that death. It's up. Can you receive that as I said it?

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Because I don't know that I do. I don't know that I like to think about myself in that way, to say, yes, my sins are so severe and so worthy of condemnation that I actually deserve to die before God.

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I'm a violator of God's law to such a degree that that death, I really should have taken it.

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Not just in theory, I should actually be dead because I deserve it.

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And so what you see in the cross is the justice of God, the holiness of God, God's wrath against sin and watch the incomprehensible love of God meeting at a single point in history in God's son for God's people.

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That's what you see. So when someone says it's not love that God would do that, it is love that cannot fully be grasped by any person.

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Watch, that God in his love would send his son who is blameless and righteous to a cross.

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I don't get it. I don't get it. I can't see how God could actually give his wrath, his settled disposition against sin, give his wrath to Jesus for me.

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I am a wretch and a rebel against him and I don't deserve him and he did it for me.

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It's love that can't be calculated. And listen, the fact that he didn't do it just for one, but that he did it for this whole group of people to bring about their salvation and not one of them deserve it, is love that none of us can understand or comprehend.

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That is love. Next, and this is important, number three. So we aren't making any choices.

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God is the sovereign over salvation. He determines who comes to him and who's saved. So we're not making any choices then.

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We're just robots. So I want to say first and foremost, what we're not saying is that our choices don't matter or that we're not making choices.

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We are actually saying that we are creatures who have a creaturely will.

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What's the most common thing people say related to this? They say, but my free will.

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Don't we have a free will? What I'm going to say is that we have a creaturely will. We have a will and we are making decisions.

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We are not robots. This is not fatalism. The things that we do matter, but we're saying

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God is sovereign over our creaturely will. He is sovereign over the actions that we want to do.

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What we're saying, I think is great, is described well by Jesus when he says in John 8, whoever commits sin is a what?

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Say it. Slave of sin. That our wills aren't free, they're actually enslaved to sin.

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And so watch, our wills, what we want, what we want, what we desire, operates on the basis of our nature.

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Now answer this for me. What is our nature? Is it spiritually alive or spiritually dead?

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So because our natures are spiritually dead, we're fallen. Our wills, our wanters, what we want, what we desire are also fallen along with our nature.

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What we want to do is based upon fundamentally what we are, fallen.

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And I gave you guys a great example. You have a room with a pile of meat and a pile of carrots. Put a vulture in the room before the pile of meat and pile of carrots.

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What does the vulture freely choose to eat? The meat. Because by nature, that's what it wants.

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Take a bunny rabbit, put it into the room before the pile of carrots and the pile of meat. What does the bunny rabbit freely choose?

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The carrots. Now take a sinner who's at war with God, who's fallen, who's hostile to God, ready?

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Put God before that sinner and their sin. What will they freely choose?

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Their sin. Now when God takes a person and he breeds life into them, he raises them to spiritual life and now they have new hearts.

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Now you put them before God. And what will they freely choose, God or their sin?

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God, because they're alive. Now I want you to see a text here to have it put before you.

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I've already shown you Genesis 50, Joseph and his brothers. He says, you meant evil against me. God meant it for good.

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I've already shown you Acts chapter 4, the prayer of the early Christians. They said, gathered together against your holy servant

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Jesus was Pontius Pilate, Herod, the people of Israel, the Gentiles to do whatever your hand had predestined to occur.

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Question. Was what happened to Jesus murder? Yes. They murdered

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Jesus. Was it evil? Did God plan it? Did God make any of them do what they wanted to do?

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They were like, I don't want to kill him. I don't want to kill him. And God was like, no, you be bad. Is that what happened?

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No. They wanted to kill Jesus so many times. And what's it say?

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He slipped out of the crowd. It wasn't his time. It was only when God determined to let these wild beasts have

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Jesus that they actually could have him. Great text that describes how this operates.

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Go to Isaiah 10. Isaiah chapter 10. It's actually a very, very fascinating passage.

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It says so much in just a little space. Isaiah chapter 10.

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This is a really interesting passage. One of my favorites to describe this. You have a moment in the history of the people of Israel where you've got a

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Syria that is a nation that destroys other nations. They're involved in all kinds of crazy practices.

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They're pagans. All these different things. Right? Now, God is actually going to judge his own people because they've broken covenant with God.

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They're involved in all kinds of sinful practices. They won't stand for justice. They're letting justice be perverted in the land.

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And God's now going to judge his people for breaking covenant with him. He's shown them mercy upon mercy and grace upon grace, and now it's time for God to act as a judge.

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So listen. Isaiah chapter 10. Watch this. Powerful. Isaiah 10 .6. Woe to you,

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Assyria, the rod of my anger, the staff in their hands is my wrath.

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By the way, I'm reading from the HCSB today, Holman Christian Standard. Woe to you,

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Assyria, the rod of my anger, the staff in their hands is my wrath. I will send him against a godless nation.

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That's Assyria against Israel. I will command him to go against a people destined for my rage, to take spoils, to plunder, and to trample them down like clay in the streets.

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God says, Assyria is the rod of my anger, and I'm going to send them against these people.

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Now watch. But this is not what he intends. This is not what he plans.

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It is his intent to destroy and to cut off many nations. So watch. Think about it for a moment.

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God's taking Assyria and using Assyria to punish Israel. And he says, but that's not what

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Assyria intends. But what does it describe about Assyria? Assyria, its intent is to destroy and to cut off many nations.

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Watch. For he says, aren't all my commanders kings? Isn't Kalno like Carchemish?

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Isn't Hamoth like Arpod? Isn't Samaria like Damascus? We're like, I don't know what any of that means.

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Apparently then it was a big deal. Okay. And it says this. As my hand sees the idolatrous kingdoms whose idols exceeded those of Jerusalem and Samaria, and as I did to Samaria and its idols, will

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I not also do to Jerusalem and to its idols? Now watch. This is where it gets interesting.

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God's taking Assyria to punish Israel. But he says, but that's not what Assyria intends.

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What Assyria wants is to destroy everything. But it's not necessarily thinking

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Israel. So think of Assyria like a rabid dog on the end of a chain, right?

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And God is restraining this rabid dog. It's trying to chomp and bite and run after everything.

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God's holding it back. But when God's ready to judge his people, he directs that dog, which wants to do this, over to his people to bring about their own demise.

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Now watch. You might be thinking, okay, makes sense. Two sinful peoples, Israel, Assyria, God's going to go, okay,

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Assyria, go ahead. That's what you want to do. Destroy. I'm going to direct you over to my people to bring about that destruction.

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Now watch. Then God says, verse 12, but when the Lord finishes all his work against Mount Zion and Jerusalem, after God has allowed

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Assyria to be his rod of anger against his people, he will say,

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I will punish the king of Assyria for his arrogant acts and the proud look in his eyes.

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Did you catch that? Sinful Israel, sinful Assyria. Assyria wants to kill and destroy, not necessarily wants to go after Israel.

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God says, okay, I'm going to go ahead. You can have it. You can have what you want to punish them.

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Then as soon as all that destruction is over, God goes, okay, now I'm going to punish you for your arrogance and your evil heart.

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Do you see it? It's a perfect description of God's sovereignty and our choices, the things that we want, the things that we do.

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Now, when someone says, and this is big, get your Bibles ready. When someone says, are we free?

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What I want to say is that actually God is free. And if you want to bring it down to its basic nuts and bolts, guys, that's what it's all about.

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Who's free in this universe? Are we truly free in terms of we're in charge, we're autonomous?

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Who is the only one that truly is free? What we would say is that God is the only one that is truly free.

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We have a creaturely freedom. We operate in God's world. He's the boss. He's in charge.

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But in terms of the freedom and salvation, I want you to see it for yourself. We're not going to exhaust every

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Bible passage on this, but this is a big one. Go to Matthew chapter 11.

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Matthew chapter 11. This is important. And I tell you what, if this doesn't bless you as a

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Christian and settle your heart, I got 10 more for you. So we'll try those.

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Matthew 11, 25. Now listen, if you checked out at all during this message, this is where you come back.

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Because this summarizes so much of what I'm trying to communicate as a pastor. Listen closely.

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At that time, Jesus said, this is Jesus now talking to the Father, I praise you,

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Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned and revealed them to infants.

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Jesus is praising God the Father, saying,

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God, I praise you that you hid these things from certain people.

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People say, no, God loves everybody. He must love everybody the same. He must do that.

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He's required to love everybody the same. Jesus says, watch, Father, praise you that you hid them from these people.

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You actually exercise judgment here, and you hid them from these people.

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But watch. Yes, Father, because this was your good pleasure, it was your good pleasure,

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God, to hide these things from these people. All things have been entrusted to me by my

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Father. No one knows the Son except the Father. And no one knows the

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Father except the Son and anyone to whom the

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Son desires to reveal Him. Did you hear that? No one knows the

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Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son desires to reveal Him. You know who that says the sovereign is?

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God. He's the sovereign. The only people that know Jesus are the ones that Jesus has decided to reveal

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Himself to. Now watch. All of a sudden, it gets interesting. You just had

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Jesus say, Father, thank you for hiding it from them. And the only ones that are going to know are the ones that the

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Son chooses to reveal. And then it says, watch, here's the call. Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

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All of you take up my yoke and learn from me because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yourselves, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

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You might be thinking, well, who's responding to that? The ones that Jesus has drawn into this relationship with Himself.

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So when the call comes out, watch, come to me, come to me. It goes out to the world, come to God.

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But the only ones who ever want to are the ones that Jesus has chosen to reveal

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Himself to because we're all a pack of sinners that bite and devour and want to rebel.

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It's only when Jesus comes into our lives in His mercy and brings us to Himself that we want to come to Him.

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Who are the ones that are weary? Who are the ones that are burdened? The ones that actually have had their eyes open to their own condition to see.

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Now, let's just do this quickly. Let's get to Romans 9 fast in terms of overview of Romans.

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Quick thing, go to Romans. Just going to point to a particular text to bring us into the story. I want you to grab hold of a few things.

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Romans 1. Romans 1 says, what about us? That we suppress the truth of God and unrighteousness, that we know the true

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God. What do we do with His truth? What do we do with it? We suppress it, and what do we do with God?

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We switch Him for what? Idols, false gods, false religion, heroin, cocaine, alcohol, sex, you name it, pride.

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We switch God for idols. It's our MO. Romans 2. Paul switches now and talks to the

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Jew who has the law of God but doesn't really do what's in the law of God but thinks that because they have it, they're justified or right with God.

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God says, you tell people don't steal, but do you? You say don't do this, but do you?

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Do you think that merely having it makes you right before God? You would actually have to do what's in that book, but you don't.

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So it leaves everybody in sin. The Jews in sin, so Romans 3, Paul says, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

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Non -God seeking. The poison of asps is under their lips. Their feet are swift to shed blood.

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The law of God will justify nobody in God's sight because the law only brings about a knowledge of sin,

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Paul says. Everyone's a sinner. The law is not going to save you, and then Paul gets into the beautiful point.

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But now, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.

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Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, all have sinned, and he says, what about Christ on that cross?

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On that cross, Jesus was a propitiation. The Father put Jesus there publicly to display, watch, that he is just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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Then Romans 4, you get the whole explanation about what happens, and don't ever lose this.

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It's worth dying for. It's worth dying for, and I need to say this, I got to say this as a side, as a pastor.

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We live in a time where people want to blur the divide between religion, the religion of man and biblical faith, and in particular,

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Rome versus the Protestants, the Reformation. People want to say, it's no big deal,

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Rome, they deny the gospel, they've declared anathema on the gospel in Trent, yeah, but they say they believe in Jesus and they have faith, so no big deal.

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Look, Paul says in Romans 4, that it is through faith apart from works that God declares righteous wicked people, not righteous people, that he counts people righteous apart from any work, and he'll never count your sins against you, and on what basis does that take place?

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He says, if you're a child of Abraham, how was Abraham justified? Genesis 15, 6,

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Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness, and Paul says, if you're a child of Abraham, you got to have the same faith as Abraham.

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How was he justified? Faith. No works, no righteousness, no good deeds, it was faith.

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That's Romans 4, and then what? Romans 5, this is where it gets really important in terms of holding the whole story together.

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Don't lose this, Romans 5, he says, humanity is summed up in two, Adam or Jesus.

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He says, you're either in Adam or you're in Jesus, and he says, if you're in Adam, there is death, condemnation, that's

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Adam, or you're in Jesus, if you're in him, he says, there's a gift of eternal life and righteousness.

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All who are in Adam die, all who are in Christ are made alive. So ready? He makes a contrast between Adam and Jesus, don't lose that, that was

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Romans 5. Romans 6, he says, you've died with Christ, you've been raised up, consider yourselves dead to sin, alive to God.

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Then in Romans 7, he explains the relationship of the law, and here we go, Romans 8, now you want to get to the text.

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Romans 8, after he explains, and you make sure you mark your

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Bibles here, that you're unable to submit to God's law in the flesh, he gets into a great passage about God's sovereignty and salvation, but I want you to see this.

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He says in Romans 8, mark it, verses 1 through 11, he says, watch, if you're in the flesh, you can't please

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God, you can't submit to his law, but you're not in the flesh anymore, you're in the spirit.

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So let's rewind for a moment, are you with me? He just made a contrast in Romans 5, what was the contrast between who?

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Adam or Jesus. Now we're in Romans 8, he makes another contrast between flesh and what?

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Spirit. We have Adam and Jesus, flesh and spirit, essentially describing the same things.

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If you're in Adam, what are you in? The flesh. If you're in Jesus, what are you in?

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The spirit. And if you're in Adam, Paul says, you can't submit to God's law, you can't do what's pleasing to God, but you're not in the flesh, now you're in the spirit in Jesus, and he says, now you can actually do the things that are in the law in the way that God intended you to.

01:00:09

Now watch, all of a sudden the story starts to hit a climax.

01:00:15

It does, here it is, Romans 8, verse 28, we know that all things work together for the good of those who love

01:00:28

God, those who are what? Those who are what? Remember the word, those who are called according to their purpose.

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No, according to his purpose. All things work together for good.

01:00:48

And then it says, for those he foreknew, he also predestined. Now I have to answer something very, very quickly, it's important.

01:00:56

People oftentimes look at the text and they say foreknew, and they go, oh, that means like God foreknew you, like he looked through time and saw you, and on that basis he predestined you?

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No. When it talks about Adam and Eve coming together in a physical, intimate relationship in the beginning of the

01:01:15

Bible, what is the word that God uses to describe that intimate, face -to -face relationship?

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What's he saying? He knew Eve. It's not like Eve was like around, and all of a sudden

01:01:29

God's like, and then he knew her, he's like, oh, hey, what's up? Like, you know, didn't see you standing there. Like now I know you. Knowledge there is intimate relationship.

01:01:37

Now watch, God uses the word other places too. He talks about Israel, you only have

01:01:44

I known from all the nations of the earth. Does that mean that God was saying, I had no idea these nations were here?

01:01:52

I've only known you. No, God means you only have

01:01:58

I chosen to be an intimate relationship with in all the nations. I've chosen you.

01:02:04

I'm an intimate relationship with you, and in this text, watch, it says God foreknew us. It's active in the

01:02:11

Greek. It means, watch, God chose to be an intimate relationship with you.

01:02:17

It says those whom he foreknew, what's the next part in the chain? He predestined, and then it says, he predestined you to be conformed to the image of his son so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers, and those he predestined, he also what?

01:02:36

Called. What's God's calling? What is it? That's where that gospel goes out, right?

01:02:43

And then all of a sudden, it goes into your life, your eyes open. You see Jesus, you believe in Jesus.

01:02:49

That's when God calls you, and it says those whom he called, he also justified.

01:02:56

What does it mean to be justified? Oh, no.

01:03:03

Thank you. To be justified is to be declared righteous. It's a legal declaration.

01:03:09

It's forensic. It's forensic. Watch. It means before God, he has in his court declared you righteous.

01:03:16

You are righteous in the eyes of God. You are free to go. You are not condemned. And then it says, and those who he justified, he also glorified.

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So watch, this is weird. This is really weird. It's kind of interesting to think about. There's a sense in which we've already been glorified and raised up with Jesus, but we know there will also be one day where we are ultimately glorified.

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This is that golden chain of redemption, and watch, it can't be broken. He foreknows the people.

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He predestines them. He calls them. He justifies them. He glorifies them. That's what

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God does in salvation, and it gets us to this amazing portion where it says, what then are we to say about these things?

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If God is for us, who can be against us?

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He did not even spare his own son, but offered him up for us all. Notice that, watch, the atonement is connected to our predestination, calling, justification, glorification.

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Remember that for the atonement issue. And then it says, watch this, who can bring an accusation or a charge against God's elect?

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God is the one who justifies. Now, you know what that means? Your sin, your lies, your adultery, your failing as a mother, your failing as a father, your failing as a son, a daughter, if you're in Christ, no charges can be brought against you.

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This is the law court that says that before God's court, no charges can be brought.

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You might be saying, but I'm an adulterer, not in God's court. You declared righteous, but I'm a liar, not in God's court.

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But I'm a drug addict, not in God's court. I'm a thief, not in God's court.

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No charge can be brought against you. Why? Because the judge has already said, you declared righteous.

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Who can bring any charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns Christ? Jesus is the one who died, but even more has been raised.

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Notice again, the death of Jesus connected to predestination, calling, justification, glorification.

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It's all connected. The work of Jesus in the atonement is connected to the plan of God in salvation.

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It can't be broken. And now finally, and we're ending on this, Romans 9,

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Romans 5, who were the two representatives? Adam or Jesus.

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Romans 8, what are the two conditions? Flesh and spirit. Now Romans 9 is going to give us another contrast between mercy and hardening, vessels of honorable use and vessels of wrath.

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Here's the text. Paul says, I speak the truth in Christ. I'm not lying. My conscience is testifying to me with the

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Holy Spirit that I have intense sorrow and continual anguish in my heart.

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Yeah, listen, you can believe in the absolute sovereignty of God. You can be committed to it like Paul.

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You can believe that he doesn't lose anybody and still have anguish in your heart for the lost.

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It's a false notion that because you believe that God is fully sovereign over salvation, that you had to capitulate to indifference.

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No, Paul is the King Calvinist. And he says,

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I have anguish in my heart for these lost people. God hasn't given to him the ability to know who his elect are.

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He says, I have anguish and sorrow continually in my heart. He says, I could wish myself to be cursed and cut off from the

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Messiah for the benefit of my brothers, my own flesh and blood. He's saying, I wish

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I could take myself out of Christ even. It's not a possibility, but that's how much anguish

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I have. They are Israelites and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the temple service, and the promises.

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The people of Israel, the ancestors are theirs and from them by physical descent came the

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Messiah who is God over all. Praise forever. Amen. Pause.

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How about these apples? When someone says, Jesus isn't God, not according to the whole

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Bible, but how about these apples? The text says, Jesus the

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Messiah is God over all. And then it says, verse six, but it is not as though the word of God has failed.

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This is important, watch, because the people have to say, Paul, if Jesus is

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Mashiach, how come all these Jews aren't following him? Did God fail in his mission?

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All these Jewish people are not following Jesus. I mean, you guys are all

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Jewish Christians, but what about these guys? I thought the Messiah was for the

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Jews, Paul would have said, and the Gentiles. But they would have said, but why,

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Paul? And he says this, it's not as though the word of God has failed for not all who are descended from Israel are

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Israel. This is important, especially today with the evangelicals being the primary reason for our involvement in a land called

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Israel today. We have a distorted view of election and salvation when we say that people today who reject

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Jesus but happen to be Jewish are the chosen people of God.

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Not according to this text. You are not a Jew by physical descent.

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The text says, neither are they all children because they are Abraham's descendants. On the contrary, your offspring will be traced through Isaac.

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That it is not the children of physical descent by physical descent who are God's children, but the children of the promise are considered to be the offspring.

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Just quickly, very quickly. Who was the first son of Abraham?

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Ishmael. Ishmael. Did God choose Ishmael to be the son through which the

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Messiah would come? Nope. Who did He choose? Isaac, Abraham's second born.

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Isaac became the firstborn, the heir of everything, the one through whom the Messiah was coming.

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And Paul's point there is it's not through physical descent that you're a child of Abraham.

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It's through the promise. It's through the faith of Abraham. And so he says this, for this is the statement of the promise, at this time

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I will come and Sarah will have a son. And not only that, but also Rebecca, another woman, received a promise when she was pregnant by one man, our ancestor

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Isaac. For though her sons had not been born yet or done anything good or bad so that God's purpose, according to election might stand, not from works, but from the one who calls.

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She was told, the older will serve the younger, as it is written, I have loved

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Jacob, but I have hated Esau. Now brothers and sisters, again,

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I've said this so many times. If we look at this text and the first thing we ask is, but why did

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God hate Esau? We have an unbiblical view of sin. We ought to immediately be alerted to the strange nature of the fact that God loved

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Jacob. It's not why did God hate Esau? That's obvious.

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We're sinners. We're at war with God. He's our enemy. He's holy and just. It makes sense that God would not love in the way that he loves his people, certain people.

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But God loves Jacob and that ought to immediately cause us to see that God is gracious and merciful that he would love

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Jacob. Now watch. What should we say then? Is there injustice with God?

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You see, here's the thing. Paul's been here before. He's had the debate. He's given this gospel so many times.

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He's walked people through this and he knows their objections. So he answers the imaginary objector.

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He says, watch, God has a people of Israel. Not all of them are truly

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Israel because it's not by physical descent. You have to actually be of the faith of Abraham through Isaac.

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Not everybody's a Jew who's physically descended. It's only people that God has called.

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And then he demonstrates that Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated. The first response is often a response against Calvinism and Reformed theology is people say, that seems unjust.

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God chose to save certain people and not others. Paul addresses it in the very text.

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Here it is. What should we say then? Is there injustice with God? What's his answer?

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Absolutely not. By no means. For he tells Moses and the text literally says,

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I will mercy. I will mercy to whom I will mercy and I will compassion whom

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I will compassion. What do we have? Adam, Jesus, flesh, spirit, mercy.

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Do you see the concepts now flowing together? Compassion. So then it does not depend on human what?

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Will. It doesn't depend on human will. But my free will.

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The text says it doesn't depend on human will or efforts.

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But on God who shows mercy for the scripture tells Pharaoh. Here's another example.

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I raised you up for this reason so that I may display my power in you and that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.

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People say, that's not really nice to Pharaoh. Pharaoh was a pagan fallen person that would have been much worse than he was if God had not restrained him.

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But what God does is he says, I raised you up for this purpose to do what? To make my name.

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My power proclaimed in all the earth. Now watch. So then he shows mercy to whom he wants to and he hardens those he wants to harden.

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Now put yourself in a courtroom for a moment. Don't forget this. This is a big one.

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Put yourself in a court for just a moment now. There's a person who is a murderer, a rapist, a thief.

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It's a person who he's admitted to and he says, yeah, I did it. I'm guilty.

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I'm the one. There's video footage. There's eyewitnesses. The blood was stained on his body. He's guilty.

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He's standing before a judge. Judge knows all the evidence perfectly. And this person in writing now is to receive sentence.

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The cameras are there, Fox News, MSNBC, Alex Jones is over in the corner with his shirt off.

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It's like all happening. Right? They're waiting for the verdict.

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Now would it be appropriate for people to stand up before the judge and to say, your honor, you must be merciful.

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You are obligated to be merciful. In order to be a good judge, you have to show mercy.

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Brothers and sisters, is the judge obligated to give mercy? No. It would be intellectually inept to suggest that the judge has to show mercy.

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God is the judge of all the earth. We are a lot of sinners. And he says this,

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I'll mercy whom I choose to mercy. And I'll harden whom

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I choose to harden. And then he says this, well, actually responds now.

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You will say to me, therefore, why then does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?

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Do you know what the answer is? The answer, the objection, when someone says, if God is sovereign, then what's the point?

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Why does he still find fault? Here's the sovereign divine answer.

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Are you ready? Who are you, O man, who answers back to God?

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Who are you? He says, what will what is formed say to the one who formed it, why did you make me like this?

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Or has the potter no right over the clay to make from the same lump one piece of pottery for honor and another for dishonor?

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Watch. What's the lump, brothers and sisters, what is it? Sinful humanity.

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And God, with the same lump of clay, he makes vessels as a potter for honorable use for the display on the shelf, the beautiful thing.

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He makes it colorful. He makes it wonderful. They put nice things in the pots. And the dishonorable use were pots that you could use as a diaper bin.

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You could throw garbage into it. That's what the text means. God with the same lump, sinful humanity, chooses to mercy people and to make honorable use vessels and others for dishonorable use.

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Here's the crazy thing, and we're done. What does the entire lump deserve?

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To be cast out. And someone says, watch, that's not really fair that God hardens the clay.

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But don't you love that God used that example? Because if you ever had clay, ever played with clay, you know that clay has certain natural properties.

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What do you have to do to get clay to be hard? Ultimately, leave it alone.

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You could speed the process up, but it has natural properties that cause it to want to harden.

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And God has with this display in this text, all of humanity, sinful humanity, same lump, vessels of honor, vessels of dishonor, mercy upon whom he chooses.

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But that same lump is of the same nature. And what does he do? Romans 5, Adam and Jesus, Romans 8, flesh and spirit,

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Romans 9, what is it? Vessels of honorable and vessels of dishonorable.

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Brothers and sisters, that's what the text says. So what? So what is that this ought to cause you to see the grace of God in your life and your salvation as one of the most glorious gifts that should draw praise from your lips every day of your life?

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Can I ask you to do something? This is like application, right? You will have failed in receiving this message if when you walk out of this door or tomorrow when you get up, you don't worship

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God more. You will not have understood the entire point of this study if this doesn't change the way you do your dishes at home, if it doesn't change the way you relate to your children, if it doesn't change the way you handle adversity, if it doesn't change the way you face the calamity, you didn't understand it.

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If there's tragedy and trial and difficulty that meets your life, you now know as a believer that you have a

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God who loves you, that will never ever be unfaithful to you, who loves you with an everlasting love and has given you grace that is so vast that it is above you, it is below you, it is before you, it is behind you.

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It is a grace that cannot be ultimately exhausted and will never pass away. When you say, yes, but I'm a failure, yes, but I'm not perfectly disciplined, but yes,

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I think like this though and I have these sins, here's the answer, grace. He loved you before the world ever was.

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Your name was written in the Lamb's Book of Life before the foundation of the world.

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It was a plan that was set in motion long before you were in liquid form. Jesus is a lamb slain before the foundation of the world.

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That means, watch, your failures are for a purpose because God's calling and election is ultimately sure and guaranteed for those who truly believe in Jesus Christ.

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Do you know Him? Do you know Him? Here's the question to ask.

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Have you truly repented of your sins to believe in Christ? Because here's the call, ready?

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The gospel is, Jesus is king of the world. He's righteous. He's the Messiah. He lived perfectly.

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He died and He rose again. God commands men and women everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

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Here's the call. Repent of your sins and believe in Christ. If you trust in Jesus, you will have in Jesus a perfect Savior.

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All who believe in Jesus Christ are given eternal life. They will never perish.

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They will never enter into condemnation. They've gone from death to life. Do you believe in Jesus?

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Do you trust in Him? Then you have eternal life. Come to Christ for life.

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Let's pray. God bless the word that went out today. I pray that You would use it for the glory of Your Son.

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I pray that the word that went out today about Your grace would be something that causes us to live differently, to love differently.

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Allow it, God, to cause us to pursue You and intimacy with You and obedience to You in a much deeper way.

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God, I pray that You would motivate us through the knowledge of Your power and sovereignty to get into the world with the gospel, which is the power of God for salvation.